


dreadful sorry, clementine

by mollivanders



Category: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Genre: Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:11:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clem lives in color, bleeding out the gray and white around her. Oranges and blues follow purples and greens in a defiant, random dance of beauty and noise.</p><p>The day she meets Joel (the first time), a little color seeps out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dreadful sorry, clementine

**Author's Note:**

> **Title: dreadful sorry, clementine**  
>  Fandom: _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_  
>  Rating: G  
> Characters: Clem (/Joel)  
> Summary: For LadyFest '10, prompt - colors. Original post [here](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html?thread=4567189#t4567189).  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Clem lives in color, bleeding out the gray and white around her. Oranges and blues follow purples and greens in a defiant, random dance of beauty and noise.

The day she meets Joel (the first time), a little color seeps out.

They spend the day at the beach and she focuses on the green of the ocean, the blue of the sky, and the orange of her sweatshirt. For a while it helps her ignore that the man next to her is drab, shrouded in black and drawing in graphite.

Joel is a vacuum for all the colors and dreams of her life, from before.

And yet somehow she stays with him, builds a temporary life for him in a temporary house, because he can’t build one on his own. He needs her colors to give meaning and desire to his lack thereof and Clem knows he loves her for this.

She wishes she could say the same.

The weeks drag into months (they don’t skip, don’t run, but drag) and Clem curls against him on the couch, tries to play a game with him, but he’s still afraid of too much, too afraid to risk, and she loses a little faith. Starts comparing them to other couples in restaurants, dyes her hair a bright orange and then a dark purple, reminds herself she’s still here in this black and gray and white life.

Somewhere.

The night she steals his car, she doesn’t have a plan, just wants to feel the noise and beat of colors again and drives at a lamppost before crashing against something else instead, in front of a strange-looking doctor’s office.

It makes her laugh senselessly, makes her dread going back to not-home.

Carrie drives her back from Mierzwiak’s office, the last day she’ll remember Joel, and the song on the radio strums _oh my darling_. She hums along with it until Carrie shuts it off.

“You sure you want to do this?” her friend asks, cautious and not understanding. “You won’t regret it?”

“I won’t remember to regret it,” Clem says, stares out the window at the sunset of pinks and yellows, orange and blue skirting the trees. “Promise.”

But a week later, she can’t get the song out of her head and she can’t remember why or from where, wanders past storefronts looking for something colorful enough to douse herself with. Even at the store, books of all shapes and sizes and colors staring down at her, she feels the black and white behind it all.

It has to come from somewhere, has to have a source (the dark mixes with the light and distracts her).

She jumps on the train to Montauk as an afterthought, hopes to see bright greens and playful blues, but it’s the middle of winter, after all, and she kicks at the sand in frustration (scratches her foot on a pink seashell).

It goes in her pocket and she runs her finger along its edge on the train ride back, wants to share her discovery with someone.

From the corner of her eye, she spots a strange man eying her over and over and thinks _he’ll do_.

He looks like he needs some color in his life too.

_Finis_


End file.
